[ 3t I 



fionated vehement flyle as his great perfedion; and in the at- 

 tempt to pourtray paflion and feeling there is no difcretion ; thefe 

 ivriters are all for a raging veiji, a part to tear a cat In. They tear 

 the paflion to tatters, to very rags. It is not merely, that I^irrow is 

 funk, in fuch a fuperabundance and complication of calamity, fuch 

 an excefs of torment as real life never experienced, and human 

 nature could not endure ; that love is fublimed ii>to frantic rav- 

 ings and fiend-like jealoufy, and breaths nothing but poifon^ 

 poniards and felf-deftru<5lirfn ; that in the magnanimous, the 

 heroic, the fierce, the vindidive, all is effort, and you perpetually 

 fee the writer ftanding on tip-toe, ftrutting and ftraining to reach 

 fomething extraordinary ; but the Germans, in their purfuit of 

 the fentimental and impalfioned, write, as if they fought to per- 

 fuade themfelves and their readers, that the indulgence of paffion. 

 is the great bufinefs of life and the great privilege of humanity. 



The ambitious defire of fhining and producing effed, occafions 

 no fmall degree of peculiarity in the language and phrafeology of 

 the German School. In produdions, which are ferious, and meant 

 to be elevated and pathetic, the flile is too commonly bombaflic 

 and inflated, and the writer appears to be gafping after gigantic 

 vafl fentiments, or labouring, to remove natural and obvious fen- 

 timents from common apprehenfion, by involved and myfterious 

 expreflions, and unufual forms of didion. We difcern an un- 

 wearied- 



